There are two urgent global problems. The first one is worldwide energy consumption, which is projected to double by 2037 when fossil fuel resources would be much lower. Burning fossil fuel and incineration of municipal solid wastes (MSW) result in global air pollution and warming due to increased emissions of CO2 from the 300 giga-tons released into the atmosphere today increasing to about 8,000 giga-tons by 2030. Therefore, to sustain the living standards of the U.S. and global population, the total renewable and clean energy sources must be able to meet at least 50% of our energy needs.
The second urgent problem is utilization of MSW. Expensive incineration of, for example, New York City's MSW consumes tremendous amounts of fossil fuel and electric energy and results in: 1) ˜25,000 ton/day of air polluting gases comprised of carbon dioxide, CO2 and other hazardous gases that are cleaned by very expensive filter systems consuming an enormous amount of electricity;                2) consumption of fossil fuel to combust municipal waste; and        3) secondhand wastes, such as variable ash compositions with the unavoidable 20% of carbon inclusions that result in flammability of large-size ash dumps and hazardous and heavy metal residual inclusions. All of these prevent utilization of ashes in building materials. Municipal waste incinerators now in use consume a lot of fossil fuel and electric power and result in air pollution and require ash-dump repository land filling for the non-recycled parts of wastes. The incineration technique is also accompanied by the use of expensive sorting and only partial reuse of plastic, glass, paper and metal wastes while such sorting and reuse treatment significantly increases customer and municipal expenses for municipal waste disposal.        
The gasification and incineration technique has a long history starting in 1842 with the Baltimore Electric Town Gas Company and the USPTO issued the ‘Lurgi’ gasification patent in 1887. Since 1910 a lot of gasification plants are working worldwide producing hydrogen and other gas content fuel from coal or shiest or tar or agricultural products or waste. Meanwhile all previously developed gasification processes of carbon content mixtures have relatively low energy power and gasification efficiencies, which results in low productivity of the industrial plants and incompatible high cost of the gas fuel or electric energy that is produced. Additional problems are air pollution and ash dumping. For example, there is Andco-torrex waste incineration-type technology of the Andco and Carborrundum companies.
There are hundreds of patented inventions related to gasification of coal and/or tar and other viscous/solid materials or the oil rectification. These methods (for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,729,395, U.S. Pat. No. 6,187,465, U.S. Pat. No. 6,485,232, U.S. Pat. No. 4,309,195, U.S. Pat. No. 4,035,281, U.S. Pat. No. 4,306,506, WO/2001/021735, WO/2001/081723 and WO/2007/081296) burn or gasify carbon content raw materials or MSW at temperatures in the range 1000° C.-2100° C. There are ‘flaming processes’ that associated with significant heat losses and air pollution. All known coal and MSW ‘gasification’ methods are also associated with relatively low energy and thermal efficiencies.
Additionally, all these methods have two disadvantages:                a) significant fluctuations of the output of gas and chemical content caused by the unpredictable fluctuations of what makes up MSW and        b) low thermal capability of the produced output gas.        
These disadvantages and low energy efficiency make all updraft, downdraft, fluidized bed, and IGCC gasification systems unsuitable for direct application of gas turbines producing electric energy. The next disadvantage of all the above mentioned gasification methods is a significant percentage in output of gas—carbon dioxide and toxic nitrogen oxides, chlorine, sulfur, and fluorine gases.
The patented ‘plasma arc’ technique requires huge capital expenses, consumes more electrical energy than can produce, and requires regular interruptions to change refractory bricks and electrodes.
The existing plasma-arc technique (PAT) provides gasification of MSW and results in organic energy renewing and partial utilization of the inorganic parts of MSW. However, the PAT unit generates less electrical energy than it consumes. These make both the capital and operating cost of the PAT unit higher than those of an incinerator.
The efficiency of the energy generation is now varying widely with the technology used. The operation of a coal fired energy generation plant is such that only about 30%-35% of the energy in the coal ends up as electricity on the other end of the generators plus the plant produces ash waste to be dumped and air pollutions.
The coal treatment technique, known as integrated gasification combined cycle or IGCC still produce the same amounts of non-usable ash waste and air pollution as other coal energy plants or MSW incinerators. The integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) method still produces the same amounts of non-usable ash waste and air pollution as other coal energy plants or MSW incinerators. The state-of-the-art IGCC technique provides coal gasification with energy efficiency of about 60%. Additionally and important, both IGCC and PAT techniques are not profitable treating MSW and therefore need continuous municipal financial support.
Electric energy transmission and distribution (T&D) systems include “reliability must-run” (RMR) electricity generation stations or RMR units. These units are the old and inefficient stations that burn an expensive fossil gas fuel generating a lot of carbon emission and producing ash, if they use coal.